A Real National Monument To Baseball: Comiskey Park

July 29, 1987|By Douglas Bukowski, completing a Ph.D. in history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also is a member of a group trying to save Comiskey Park.

Whatever else it becomes, post-industrial Chicago will be a center for entertainment and tourism. Enter Comiskey Park, owned and operated by the National Park Service as a working national monument complete with major league team.

The White Sox stadium legislation passed last December was hastily written. It prohibits the building of more than one facility without expressly calling for the construction of just one new stadium. Such is the rush of politics. What the act does state clearly is that the stadium authority must report to the General Assembly before acting. By law that report has to include ``evaluation of the economic consequences`` of the proposed action and ``analysis of the reasons for acquiring a site`` for a new stadium.

This is where the new-stadium argument will break down. Backers will have to address resident relocation costs and the exact structural condition of Comiskey Park. With replacement housing for a possible West Side Bears stadium estimated at $23 million, Sox stadium proponents have been quiet on the matter of displacement costs.

They also have been reluctant to disclose Comiskey Park`s engineering problems. So far, generalities without hard data have sufficed as ``proof`` of the park`s condition; the stadium authority will have to offer more in its report to the legislature. Most likely, authority board members will have to conclude what the liability insurance industry already knows--Comiskey Park is safe to play in.

What to do? The authority should issue its report and go a step further: propose the renovation of Comiskey Park, the erection of a baseball museum nearby and the transferring of both to the National Park Service for operation as a national monument to the national pastime.

The authority already has the power to construct, ``operate, regulate and maintain facilities`` for its purposes, so museum construction is feasible. If it lacks the power to renovate the park, build the museum and then cede both to the park service, the authority should request it from the General Assembly. In that rarest of situations--where history, tradition and profit can be fitted togeher--some bold action may be necessary.

As to renovation cost, Yankee Stadium constitutes a false precedent. The real issue here is the cost of all recent public construction works. What New York mismanaged in the 1970s we repeated with the very new--and very over- budget--State of Illinois Center and McCormick Place Annex. If the will is there, renovation can be made to work.

If there is any one practical problem with renovation, it concerns where the White Sox will play if work cannot be scheduled around them. The alternatives begin but do not end with Wrigley and Soldier Field. The city has industrial park land at 26th Street and California Avenue and at 43d and Halsted Streets; both areas are accessible to transportation. The site could be made permanent and then given to a stadium-starved Park District, or the stands and lighting could be distinctly temporary.

A national monument and companion baseall museum offer some intriguing possibilities. The exterior of the park would be returned to its classic look of the 1930s--clean brick face, open archways, awnings and scuppers. Chicago is home to some of the best brick construction in the nation; with the whitewash off Comiskey Park`s facade, the structure again can serve as an outstanding example of Chicago`s masonry craftsmanship. Far-fetched? The park already has been declared eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

On the inside, the common areas can be better lighted and public facilities enlarged. The vending counters also should be returned to their former appearance, with glazed brick and neon signs. The field, of course, should be left alone.

A National Park presence means the ball park site would be open year- round. Cooperstown shows that people will visit a legitimate baseball museum any time. The museum would be designed to evoke memories of the late and lamented Ebbets Field, Polo Grounds and Shibe Park. The displays would be devoted to Chicago baseball and might show the evolution of the city`s major league parks, uniforms and equipment.

Along with exhibits would be archives devoted to baseball as social history.

The archives could include an oral history project on Chicago players or Chicagoans involved in major league ball. The value of the reminiscences of Bill Skowron or Ernie Banks is obvious, but consider what could have been done with the 40th anniversary of the Indians-Sox game of July 5, 1947. A 23-year- old Cleveland rookie by the name of Larry Doby broke the color line in the American League, at Comiskey Park.